


Bloody Beaches

by Arwriter



Category: Red Dead Redemption (Video Games)
Genre: Angst, Arthur Whump, Chapter 5: Guarma (Red Dead Redemption 2), Character Death, Deathfic, Guarma, Hurt Arthur Morgan, Hurt No Comfort, Spoilers
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-03-06
Updated: 2019-03-06
Packaged: 2019-11-12 20:32:08
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 975
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18017942
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Arwriter/pseuds/Arwriter
Summary: Arthur was already weak when he washed up on Guarma, and the soldiers are not patient.





	Bloody Beaches

**Author's Note:**

> I didn't have a ton of time, but I saw that this could happen from a video on Tumblr and I'm sadistic so...I'm sorry.

The soldiers had chained their legs, dragging them along the sand like they were slaves, barking orders and threats in a language Dutch didn’t understand. The men were eyeing them like animals, like pigs being led to the butcher. 

Dutch knew that if he couldn’t manage to talk his way out of this one, that might very well be the case. The island had the stench of death since he’d first set foot on its beach. 

Because that was all he had been plagued with since arriving. 

Hosea, shot down in front of him. His best friend for over twenty years, the man he loved more than words could describe, his constant lifeline, his guide, gone just like that. Ripped away so suddenly, dead so fast it was like he’d never existed. 

And then he’d lost Arthur, too. Lost him to the ocean, trapped on the boat that was supposed to save him. Dutch was supposed to save him. And he’d failed. He’d gotten his family killed.

But Arthur had made his way back to Dutch, just as he always had. Like he always would. Despite the doubting and the failures and the deaths, he hadn’t lost Arthur yet. 

Arthur was weak from his fight with the storm, too weak to move at the speed the soldiers wanted, and Dutch could feel him lagging behind. The shackles dug into his ankles, the chain dragging in the sand. Arthur was wheezing as he struggled to move his battered, sick body. 

Apparently, that didn’t sit too well with their captors. 

Dutch hadn’t been looking, staring straight ahead, moving along in the line like he was instructed to. Bill was in front of him, shuffling his feet, Dutch forced to slow as Arthur continued to fall behind. 

He knew they needed to get him someplace safe. Arthur had barely been given a few minutes to recover once he’d found Dutch, not nearly enough time for him to rest.

Dutch had been doing his best to appeal to the guards, tongue running automatically, mind racing as he spun his new web of fabricated lies. 

Then Arthur had cried out, Dutch turning just in time to see one of the soldiers slam his baton into the back of the weakened man’s leg, making his knees buckle. 

“Hey!” Dutch screamed when they hit him again, this time in the back, sending Arthur crashing to the ground. He rushed forward, ignoring the chains around his legs, instantly stopped by one of the soldiers. “Hey, hey! Leave him alone!” 

They didn’t listen, the soldier slamming the stick into Arthur’s side, his stomach, his chest, over and over again. Dutch fought against the man holding him back, eyes glued to Arthur as he tried to get to him, the younger man’s cries growing worse and desperate as he arched up off the ground, visibly weakening after each blow. 

“You’re gonna kill him!” 

They weren’t listening, and the soldier didn’t stop his brutal torture of the defenseless shipwreck victim. The barrel of a gun was suddenly in Dutch’s face, the man he was grappling with shoving him backwards. He was forced to stop his fighting, raising his hands, defeated. 

But he could still see the attack. Arthur’s eyes were wide, locking onto Dutch, pleading. His teeth were stained with blood, each one of his cries tearing viciously at Dutch’s already tattered heart. 

Even when Arthur went silent, even when a guttural wheeze was the last noise dying in his throat, when he fell back against the sand, limp and bloody and unmoving, the beating didn’t stop. 

The soldier was still slamming the baton into Arthur’s side, apparently unsatisfied, screaming at the still man like being too weak to walk was some sort of crime. 

The remaining soldiers were screaming at Dutch to calm down, like he wasn’t watching the boy he raised as a son die right before his eyes. 

And when the savage mauling finally came to a stop, when the man kicked Arthur to the side and spit at his unmoving body, Dutch hardly noticed. His eyes didn’t leave Arthur, couldn’t look away from his slack, bloody face. 

He barely registered what they were doing, hardly saw them unclip the chain from the shackles around Arthur’s legs. He barely even saw the stunned, horrified faces from the men chained in front of him, their gazes moving away from Arthur to stare warily at Dutch.  

Dutch almost didn’t react when the soldiers shoved him forward, ordering him along, continuing like nothing had happened. Like they hadn’t just beaten a man to death. Like they hadn’t just torn away the one thing holding Dutch together. 

The rage he’d felt in his chest after watching Hosea fall to the ground, face twisted in pain and fear as he writhed and died, was gone. The fire was put out, replaced only with a detached emptiness, a dangerous numbness, a hollow aching in his chest as he trekked through the sands stained with Arthur’s blood. 

His focus was no longer on where they were going, how to get off the island, what to do next. His thoughts were only on how close he’d been, and how his greed had ripped his family apart.  

He’d lost Arthur, too. First Hosea, the man he loved, and then the man he loved as a son. Both lost because of him, two lives he’d let slip away, left to die forgotten and hated by the world. 

And Dutch no longer had a thought of the future. His plans shredded to pieces, his faith shattered. Because he’d lost his family. The two most important people, the ones he needed by his side, gone because of him. 

They left the man behind on the shore of the beach he’d died on, Arthur Morgan’s death destroying what was left of Dutch Van der Linde’s mind. 

  
  
  



End file.
